Melrose Boy Scout Troop 68 Forum

[Sergio]

(the title is a pun on what happened to Lucky) Game was played on November 9th, 2007.

Two Steps Back, One Step Forward
A synopsis written through the eyes of Cooncarin Trunks

A night like so many others. After eating and prayer, saying goodnight to loved ones, I too hit the hay. But it wasn’t a long and peaceful sleep. Mere hours into my slumber I awoke to the screams of my adopted son, Stir. At first I wasn’t that concerned. Many of the recent nights Stir has been having nightmares. I even considered going straight back to sleep, but when I heard Lucky moving towards Stir’s chambers I did so as well. It’s a good thing I did. In the room at the feet of Stir’s bed was the ghostly image of a young boy. I recognized him as a friend of Stir’s, named Avery, right away. A couple weeks ago Avery had disappeared, but we thought nothing of it. He was a boy living on the street and children like him often go away or “disappear” without telling anybody. My original assumption that this was a ghost of Avery was wrong. I sensed no evil or undead in the room. To be honest, even to this day I have no knowledge of what it was, or how Avery contacted us. He was trying to speak, but the only info we really got from him was that he was being held hostage with a couple dozen other children in or near an auditorium that he thought was underground. We planned to set out in the morning. Stir began to pack his bags which begged the question, “Where do you think you’re going?” Stir is only 15 years old, and we had agreed upon 16 as the age he could begin adventuring. But, he would have none of it. He was going.

The next morning I put Zomb in charge of locating other guild members or friends to accompany us on the journey. Meanwhile, Lucky and I headed to the castle to discuss the matter over with him. He was on his way out so we had little time to talk. We found out that about 20 children had gone missing from Givemea recently but the royal family was doing nothing about it. He had no idea where they were being taken. Our first assumptions were either ANEC or the original Entertainment Center dungeons. We didn’t have much time to check out both, especially with ANEC being as far away as it is. Augury came in handy. It helped reveal the location as the Entertainment Center. This was good since it was much closer than ANEC.

By the time we got back to the guild hall Zomb had finished gathering the group. Other than myself, Zomb, and Lucky he had gotten Oswald (a fighter), Liger (a fighter we preferred to call Ligré), a good cleric friend of mine I call Nick, and lastly a new friend of the guild named Barent. Everyone was a fighter except for Nick and I. With Stir along that made 8 total.

We set out for the Entertainment Center right away, and had no trouble getting there. Except for getting lost once. The real action happened once we got there. We were almost instantly attacked by giant bats. Those were easy enough. Next came the worgs. Also not very difficult, but a couple did surround us and caused a little havoc. After killing them we moved inside for safety before anything else could come. (Yes, we went into the dungeon for safety. Ironic I know.) We went straight towards the auditorium where there was a play in progress. Interesting. Up on stage was a human performing Shakespeare by himself. His audience was a bunch of gargoyles and giant rats. They seemed mesmerized by him. We tried not to be a bother, but after just a few words he disappeared in smoke and the creatures left behind to attack. I guess they don’t like having their show disrupted. The rats would be no problem at all, but we realized there was 20 of them, the same amount of kids that disappeared. So, we saved them for last. After killing the gargoyles Lucky killed one rat. It didn’t change into a child, so we assumed it was safe. We searched the stage and behind it with little success of locating the children. We decided to sleep on stage for the night. During the evening shift that Zomb was on he noticed a figure moving by the seats. After getting everybody awake we went to investigate. It was the actor from earlier sleeping in the corner. I put a hold person spell on him and Lucky put a sword by his throat. I regret this decision now. As soon as the spell finished he woke up. It didn’t hold him at all. He tried to spark up a conversation, but we would have none of it. Lucky used the medallion of thought projection to try and figure out if he was evil or not. The actor somehow knew what was happening though and fangs began to grow from his teeth, and he threw his cape back to reveal himself better. A vampire! Lucky was so close he had no choice but to fight. I got my Lightning Rod out but Lucky would have to fight a few rounds first. It looked good at first, but the vampire did score one hit. Because of this he drained 2 levels from Lucky. I got in 2 shots with the rod, and after Lucky hit him one more time he poofed into smoke. We knew this meant that he had to get back to his coffin to try and regenerate. We searched for hours with no luck. All that we did was kill some orc like creatures, and blow up a ball creature that shot spores at us. One of the room had some spare clerical robes and gowns, so of course I threw them into the portable hole. You never know when extra robes will be needed. We also came upon some dreaded owlbears. I believe it was Oswald who first opened the door, but luckily he closed it as well. We prepared for the fight. Oswald thought he only saw four of them, so I prepared a lightning spell which would be able to weaken them significantly. Oswald opened the door again and off went the lightning. I hit 4 of them succesfully, and Lucky charged in. We found out right away that there was more than just 4. A total of 7. This was bad news since we hadn't cast any defensive spells, or fully healed from previous battles. The first 4 guys in took on the weak ones that I had hit, which left me with an uninjured owlbear to take on. I didn't have to much trouble, so I helped Barent finish his off. Looking around it looked like everybody else managed to kill their owlbears alright. But, with the owlbears dead we were still no closer to finding the missing children. The room was empty except for half a dozen owlbear corpses.

It was Stir who suggested searching for a secret door in a hallway behind the stage. Success! Inside were all the children, sleeping, and two coffins. We decided to deal with the coffins first. The first coffin had the friendly vampire from the restaurant inside. We removed the stake in his chest since we knew he could regenerate. The second coffin had his brother inside, so we ignored that for now. We then clothed the children with the robes we found earlier, and gave them any extra food we had. The vampire had been keeping them naked, and from what we could tell fed them practically nothing. My only guess is that he was preparing to turn most of them into vampires as well, or keeping them for a food source. I didn't really want the chance to fidn out from the vampire personally. We found another secret door in this room, which led to a much smaller room with only one black coffin inside. We took our positions and opened it up. I started to jam a steak into his heart while Nick held a holy symbol and threw holy water at him. The burn from the water woke him up, just in time for him to see me stabbing him. To finish the job Lucky cut his head off, and I filled his mouth with holy bread. He was finally dead for good. There was a good amount of magical items in this room which we collected. We got the children and headed home. We also took the vampires coffin since it was lined in gold and silver. Back home this landed us a quick 400 gold. A reminder to all the young adventurers who may be reading this, "Take it, take it all" If you think it may be worth something, try and sell it. And if not, it's always nice to have some large murals or extra clerical robes on hand.

We were going to use a restoration spell to bring Lucky’s levels back, but didn’t have the 150,000 gold necessary to fully do the spell. Discussion with the King and church was unsucesfull as well. Apparently saving 20 children isn't as important as we thought. But, we were in no position to argue. Nothing we could do would get that spell cast, or get that price lower. Lucky wasn’t that discouraged by the problem though since he had done so well and gotten experience from the adventure. The magic items ended up being a flying broom, folding boat, and necklace of fire beads. It didn't take to long to figure out the code words for the items, and they were quickly stored in the guild hall for safe keeping.

It was a great adventure, and that evening Stir slept without a peep.

[Lucas]

too long

[Sergio]

Well when you write a synopsis Lucas you can make it shorter.
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[Mike L]

Who's Lucas?

[SteveB]

Lucas Ellering
Jacob and Nick's brother
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[Alex]

[SteveB]

Nice job on the story Sergio. I like the way you ended it by refering to the opening of your story.

You should add in a paragraph about the owlbears though. It was a long fight afterall.
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[Sergio]

You're right, I completely forgot about the owlbears. I'll put that in.

Edit: I bolded the word hours to emphasize how long it took us and added the owlbear section.

Also added in various other things I forgot the first round through.
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